


All the Strangeness in the Air

by teacup_of_doom



Category: Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-14
Updated: 2012-10-14
Packaged: 2017-11-16 06:37:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/536572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teacup_of_doom/pseuds/teacup_of_doom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A police officer is sent to investigate some strange reports coming from the local middle school. Set during SYWTBAW.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All the Strangeness in the Air

**Author's Note:**

> Cross posted from my LJ, where it was written for the dai_sitho fic exchange. Beta'd by rusting_roses and phoenix_laugh.
> 
> For the prompt: Wizardry from the view of and outsider.

Police officer Cassidy Williams looked at the reports that had been placed on her desk, and felt a headache coming on. It had started that morning. Reports of things just randomly, violently and inexplicably appearing over large portions of her district. Not that it was technically "her" district, but it was the thought that counted. She was fairly new to the precinct, by about four months, fresh out of rookieship.  
  
She'd grown up in the area, and knew that sometimes, odd things happened around here. The older members of the Force had shared some of them with the newbies. They had told stores of "talking koi fish", someone claiming to have seen a giant centipede-like creature in downtown Manhattan that had asked them politely to "please move, or they would be late for the next transit", a dragon in the subway system (people always thought there were things in the subway - usually they were giant rats). There had been reports of grown men and women fighting what looked like monsters or something, but no traces of these were ever seen. There was also the house kids called Crazy Swale's, but they'd never received a call from dispatch to go there. Sometimes, people would find diagrams of some foreign language written in chalk all over the place, on the ground, in homes, on rooftops, on walls, like the signage of some strange tag sign scrawled by kids who couldn't afford spray paint. Those, however, had gotten so common that no one bothered to report them anymore.   
  
She hadn't believed a word of it. It was practically the job of older officers to try and psych out their younger subordinates. And yet... She remembered funny things happening as a child, at the edge of her memory, but couldn't quite place them.  
  
The first time she'd run across one of the diagrams, she'd been patrolling one of the calmer neighborhoods. It was there, just spread under a scattering of old leaves in the park. She'd been curious and moved the leaves away to get a better look. It didn't look sinister, in fact, it had looked quite beautiful, all those lines and loops. Like a language that she didn't recognize and didn't think should exist, even as a part of her mind tugged at her - as if she should be able to read it. Cassidy had dismissed it, along with the fact that she felt like the trees were taking revenge on her moving the fallen leaves because she'd tripped over a protruding tree root as she left the scene.   
  
But this had to take the cake. Cassidy would swear that someone was messing with her, if she hadn't fielded the calls herself.   
  
The local middle school had called. Around lunchtime, things had started to apparently appear randomly on the sports field. She would have thought it was a prank call, except it had been the  _principal_  who had called. 

No one was seeing anyone bring these things onto the field, they were apparently _popping into existence_  as the students and faculty _watched_. Admittedly, Cassidy had smirked at the time of the call - it would not have been the first time someone had managed to slip something a little  _mind-bending_  into the school bake sale - usually in brownie form. But she still had to go down and check it out, at least see if they were telling the truth about the things that were showing up, everything from lumber to portable color TVs, and evidently, a library's worth of books that had come raining from the Heavens.   
  
Cassidy had to admit something was definitely up when a news van blurred past her squad car, heading for the middle school.  
  
By the look of it, the entire school was outside, classes forgotten, milling about in front of the field. Cassidy got out of the squad car. Her partner went to go stall the reporters, while she went to go check out the field for herself. What she saw confused her, but also completely blew her away.   
  
There was a lot of stuff on the field, and most of it had absolutely no reason to be there.   
  
Sure, there were school supplies, including art supplies, scattered across the field, but it was the other stuff that made the scene surreal.   
  
Several Harley Davidson motorcycles of different make were sitting in several points on the field, one having fallen over as if it had been in an accident. There was a very heavy looking stove half buried in a crater that made it look like it had it the ground - hard. Another stainless steel one was lying broken in the hot sun. An old fashioned horse cart was being thoroughly examined by some of the younger kids - it looked like something from the Victorian Era. Someone - a teacher, Cassidy suspected, was hurrying over to take the horsewhip away before any real damage could be done. Stacks of freshly cut lumber - pine by the wafting smell of it - created a wall nearly six feet high. There had definitely been a "rain" of books. The school librarian wasn't wasting time and had formed groups of students, all of whom were running around picking up as many as they could, in case they disappeared before they got them all. There was even an anatomically correct - and how - of some Greek or Roman (male) deity in marble standing erect and gazing into the distance. Otherwise, it was pure chaos.   
  
A man Cassidy assumed was the principle came running over. "Officer, do you see this? It's crazy! We don't even know where this stuff  _came_  from and-" Sweat was dripping off his bald, shiny forehead.   
  
She got her head together, stopped gaping open-mouthed at the scene in front of her, and said "sir, when did this start and how has all this stuff been appearing on the field without anyone noticing? If it's a prank then-"  
  
He interrupted her. "No, you don't understand, I tried to explain it on the phone, but -"  
  
Her senior partner wandered over, away from the reporters. "Williams, the reporters are willing to hold off for now, what do we have here, and who is this?"  
  
"Francis McMarsh, I'm principal of this middle school." Cassidy almost grinned, she had been right! "Look, as I was explaining to this officer, all of this just  _appeared_  on the field, like magic!"  
  
Cassidy's partner scoffed and turned to her. "Williams, I'll admit that something strange is going on here, but magic?"  
  
Cassidy shook her head. "Sir, I just took the calls and said we'd come down here."  
  
"I'm telling you the truth!" McMarsh sounded pissed. "Anyone here will tell you, this stuff just  _showed up_  on the field. There were no people! All there was, each time, was the sound of this huge-"

There was a loud, violent  _BANG!_ Cassidy was thrown backwards, and a few students screamed, several ran past the police officers and the principle in terror, that suddenly subsided into an eerie silence across the field. Cassidy once again gaped at the field, but this time her mind was trying to reconcile what had just happened with the laws of both rationality and physics. It couldn't.  
  
Standing in the field, a hairsbreadth from the marble statue, was a very large, very shiny and very  _big_ Lear Jet. It had to be brand new.   
  
She breathed, and the students were yelling again, rushing the field to take a look at the jet. The reporters were going to have a field day, Cassidy thought, as her partner dragged her upwards. "Did you just see what I-" She began.  
  
"Yeah." Her partner replied shakily. "Look, get on to whoever handles aviation administration in NYC. Tell them about - this- and for goodness sake keep it on the down low!" He paused, and then hissed. "What the fuck is going on here?!"

She did it without question, her mind racing. The answer she'd brought back to both the principle and her partner thirty minutes later was not entirely encouraging. According to the person she'd spoken to in aviation, this plane's serial number wasn't even registered yet. The plane itself  _was still supposed to be on the factory floor_.   
  
They stared at the sight before them for a few minutes. In the meantime, her partner had called for backup. Even the news crews hadn't started filming yet, as if they were waiting for something more to show up - as if anything more amazing  _could_  show up. For some reason, that worried Cassidy quite a bit.   
  
Then she noticed something, at the edge of the field. Two men - with the gorgeous looks of models - had arrived at the edge of the field. One was carrying a book and a stick. The other was drawing on the pavement with chalk. Her brows knitted, and she'd started across the field before she realized she'd wanted to go. The men looked at each other and started chanting something she couldn't quite hear, but it was if the feeling of what they were saying brushed against her ears, worked its way into her head.   
  
And then she was standing in the middle of an empty field, along with a school's worth of pre-teens and several news crews who were reporting about a rash of kids pulling fire alarms to get out of school early, and a very strange sense that she'd just seen something that was the answer to... something important.

* * *

Cassidy mulled over the middle school incident for over a week. There had been something going on there, she knew it. Something more than fire alarms, a lot bigger and stranger and just plain  _more_  than fire alarms. Sometimes, when she slept at night, she dreamt of marble gods and Lear jets, wands and diagrams, and that strange language whispering in her ears. It had started to affect her work, so she took the next Friday off.   
  
Walking through the park, wearing an old coat and kicking amber colored leaves out of the way, she wasn't really paying attention to where she was going, until she bumped into a stocky, attractive man.   
  
"Sorry!" She gasped and pulled away as fast as she could. "I was just thinking and -" She caught sight of his face, and froze, her eyes moving from the chalk in his hand to the half finished diagram on the ground and back. Images flew through her mind and Cassidy's gaze sapped back up to his face.   
  
He looked amused. "It's ok, I'm not hurt. Are you ok?"   
  
Cassidy blinked, and then decided to chance it. "I know this is going to sound strange." She said slowly. "And forgive me if I'm barking up the wrong tree....I'm a police officer, and.... look, how exactly did you get rid of the Lear jet on the playing field of the middle school near here? It was there one minute, and then it's like everyone forgot it was there, but I remember it, at least I do sometimes...." She flushed as soon as she'd said it. How stupid did that sound? This guy would probably think she was nuts!   
  
To her surprise and relief, he threw back his head and laughed after staring at her for a few seconds. In a broad Brooklyn accent, he spoke, holding out a hand for her to shake. "I'm Carl Romeo." He said. "Tell me officer, do you believe in magic?"


End file.
